


Collected Folk of the Air Metas

by Emjen_Enla



Series: Meta Archive [1]
Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Book 1: The Cruel Prince, Book 2: The Wicked King, Book 3: The Queen of Nothing Speculation, Death Threats, F/M, Faerie True Names, Faeries can't lie, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Meta, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, loss of free will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29837058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjen_Enla/pseuds/Emjen_Enla
Summary: An archive collection of TFotA meta that I originally posted on Tumblr. Archived to AO3 as part of the March Meta Matters Challenge. Originally written in 2018-2019.Chapters:1. Discussion of the implications of Cardan's "Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike" quote in TCP given he is faerie and cannot lie.2. A brief explanation of the concept of faerie true names.3. More true name discussion, this time involving a theory about Lady Asha using Cardan's to control him.4. Holly Black has apparently been quoted as saying that Cardan is the only person who truly understands Jude. A discussion of that.5. Discussion of why Cardan doesn't want Balekin dead.6. QoN theories after reading an early sneak peak of the book.
Relationships: Balekin Greenbriar & Cardan Greenbriar, Cardan Greenbriar & Lady Asha, Cardan Greenbriar & None, Jude Duarte & Balekin Greenbriar, Jude Duarte & Madoc, Jude Duarte & None, Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Series: Meta Archive [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2193525
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	1. Something horrifying I just realized about my favorite Cruel Prince quote

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Summary:** Discussion of the implications of Cardan's "Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike" quote in TCP given he is faerie and cannot lie.  
>  **Originally posted:** December 3, 2018

I mentioned a while ago that this was my favorite Cardan quote:

 _“There you are,“ Cardan says as I take my place beside him. “How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.”_ (The Cruel Prince pp. 357)

I was just scrolling through the various quotes I’ve posted here and I realized something truly horrifying about it:

Cardan is faerie. He can’t lie, which means that he’s not just being dramatic here. While Jude was off subduing Madoc someone threatened Cardan by telling him his head was going to end up on a spike. That’s terrifying.

Of course, there’s the possibility that Cardan is exaggerating, but his conversation with the guards at the beginning of part two suggests that while he can say things out of context so they seem to mean something else, everything he says has to be literally true (pp. 255-256). In other words, someone (probably, Balekin, let’s be honest) would have had to use that exact threat on him in the time he specifies for him to actually be able to actually say that to Jude.

The other thing that strikes me about this is how calm he is about the whole thing. Jude has just taken care of Madoc and she’s freaking out, but Cardan is completely calm (pp. 357). He’s just like, “Oh, well I was just threatened by someone and told that if I didn’t do what they wanted they’d not only kill me but defile my corpse, but everything’s A-Okay. What about you?” I think that says a lot about Cardan’s coping mechanisms. He seemed to deal with things by either ignoring them and hoping they’ll go away (like he tries to do with his feelings for Jude) or making them into a joke and acting like they don’t bother him.

Jude realizes towards the end of the book that if she and Cardan ever fought she would win (pp. 304-305). Cardan doesn’t have any skill in physical fighting so his only defenses are to make friends and act unaffected. He does this when he befriends Dain’s spies while being held prisoner (pp. 298-300), and does it again when Jude betrays him at the end of the book (pp. 364-365). 

Cardan knows that he can’t defend himself against Balekin if Jude’s plan goes wrong so he tries to cope with the situation by laughing at it. If he can turn it into a joke then its not as scary and everything will have to work out. However, that doesn’t mean that underneath the smile he’s not as worked up as Jude is.


	2. Faerie True Names

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Summary:** A brief explanation of the concept of faerie true names. Written before I'd read the Modern Faerie Tales.  
>  **Originally Posted:** January 17, 2019
> 
> CW: Emetophobia

**Ask:**

**[Wants to know what I meant by Cardan's true name, which I had previously mentioned wanting to know.]**

**Me:**

A faerie’s real name can be used to compel them to do things. As a result, they use another name and keep their true name a secret. I’m pretty sure it’s a common thing in faerie literature (Cassandra Clare uses it in _The Dark Artifices_ and Margaret Rogerson does the same in _An Enchantment of Ravens_ ), but it’s never explained in _the Folk of the Air_ books which leads me to believe that its a concept introduced in one of Holly Black’s earlier faerie series. There are, however, two references to it in _The Wicked King_ :

“I wish I’d asked Cardan for his true name back when I had a crossbow trained on him.” (TWK pp. 90)

“[Cardan] ignores me and takes [the Bomb’s] hand. “Liliver, as you king, I command you,” he says with great dignity for someone sitting on the floor beside the bucket he’s retched in. “Go with Jude.” (TWK pp. 293)

There might be further references in TCP, but if there are I don’t remember them.


	3. Asha Controlling Cardan Theory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Summary:** More true name discussion, this time involving a theory about Lady Asha using Cardan's to control him.  
>  **Originally Posted:** January 24, 2019

**Ask:**

**[Theorizing that Asha might have worked her way back into the court by ensorcelling Cardan with his true name.]**

**Me:**

I suppose that’s possible, given that Asha randomly turns up in court at the end of the book, but it’s far from the only possibility.

The Barnes and Noble collector’s edition of TWK contains some deleted scenes one of which is a scene between Cardan and Asha in Cardan’s POV. While this scene is undeniably a tense one, at no point does it seem like Cardan’s about to lose his free will. He asks Asha what she wants and appears to expect that she’ll try to convince him to give it to her. Asha comes dressed like a courtier, which wouldn’t have mattered if she was just planning to ensorcell him. True, we don’t ever figure out exactly what Asha wants, but we also don’t get the impression that it’s something she plans to take without his consent.

That said, this quote does support your reading:

 _“He is reminded of the panicky feeling of being at her mercy. He doesn’t want to threaten her, and instinct tells him that if he does, he may have to pay out those threats.”_ (TWK B&N pp. 335)

Why has Cardan been at Asha’s mercy when by all accounts she spent his entire life ignoring him and then got thrown into prison? What does he mean by “being at her mercy?” He could be referring to her using his true name to make him do what she wants, but there are other forms of leverage and other things that could cause him to feel like he was at her mercy. Also, if he knows she’ll use his true name on him why would he think he’d get the chance to actually act on his threats?

This quote suggests another reading:

 _“Before Eldred locked her away, Cardan wanted her attention with a kind of desperate craving. Rare praise from her lips only sharpened his hunger for more. And although it has been many years, he finds he’s not as immune as he hopes.”_ (TWK B&N pp. 333)

Cardan knows Asha was bad to him, but he still wants her attention and cares what she thinks of him. We know that Cardan would do a lot to get her attention as a child (TWK B&N pp. 74), but we don’t know how far that went. All we know about why Asha ended up in prison is this:

 _“What was her crime?” I ask downplaying my knowledge. I hope she will set the game and show more of herself that way.  
_ _The Roach grunts, playing along. “She was Eldred’s consort, and when he tried of her, she got tossed into the Tower.”  
_ _There was doubtlessly more to it than that, but all I have discovered is that it concerned the death of another lover of the High King’s and, somehow, Cardan’s involvement.”_ (TWK B&N pp. 127)

We don’t know exactly what happened here, but we do know that this incident ended with Cardan being sent to live with Balekin (TWK B&N pp.131). In TCP Cardan says he went to live with Balekin because Eldred hated him and Dain didn’t want him around (TCP pp. 253). To be honest, this makes me wonder if this had something to do with the whole Liriope incident again, but I’m not sure if the timelines line up. Regardless of what the particulars of the incident were, I think that Cardan did something for Asha either on her orders or to get her attention and it backfired resulting in her in prison and him with Balekin.

Basically, where I’m going with this is that Asha probably has something she can hang over Cardan’s head. Whether she’s actually using his true name to control him, or threatening him with something he did before she was imprisoned, or simply betting on his desire to win her affection, there’s a lot more going on between them than Jude thinks there is.


	4. Jude, Cardan and Understanding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Summary:** Holly Black has apparently been quoted as saying that Cardan is the only person who truly understands Jude. A discussion of that.  
>  **Originally Posted:** January 23, 2019

Apparently Holly Black said somewhere that Cardan is the only person who truly understands Jude. I started thinking about it and went off on an epic tangent and here’s the fruits of my labor:

This final scene between Jude and Balekin is pretty telling:

_“I have spent a lifetime making myself small in the hopes I could find an acceptable place in Elfhame, and then, when I pulled off the biggest, grandest coup imaginable, I had to hide my abilities more than ever._

_“No,” I say. “That’s not true.”_

_“He looks surprised. Even in the Tower of Forgetting, when he was a prisoner, I still let Vulciber strike me. In the Undersea, I pretended to have no dignity at all. Why should he think I see myself any differently than he sees me?”_ (TWK pp. 297)

While I’d argue that killing Balekin is probably what dooms Jude a couple chapters later, this is a powerful scene for her because in it she finally shows her hand. Balekin dies having seen the real Jude Duarte, the girl who has been running Elfhame from behind the scenes for months. He dies knowing just how badly he has underestimated her.

But Emjen, you might be saying, how does this have anything to do with Cardan? It has everything to do with it actually, because Cardan has seen Jude and grasped how badly she has been underestimated and lived. None of the other characters do this. Madoc sees the real Jude at the end of TCP, but he doesn’t actually grasp it. He assumes that she must have been manipulated by Cardan because there’s no way this random mortal could be the mastermind behind the coup. Even when Madoc realizes Jude’s the one pulling the strings, he still assumes he can control her and twist her plans to his own ends. He never truly sees her as the puppet master she is.

Cardan does. At the end of TCP Jude captures him, pushes him around and ultimately manipulates him onto a throne he didn’t even want. She then proceeds to hogtie him with commands to keep him from acting against her. Cardan is extremely aware of just what Jude is capable of and he doesn’t make the mistake of underestimating her again. There’s also probably a level of intrinsic understanding in that they were both neglected children who created selves which got them the recognition and acknowledgement they craved. This allows Cardan to understand why Jude is the way she is in a way that Taryn and Vivi cannot.

The sad flipside of this discussion is that while Cardan understands Jude intrinsically, I do not think she understands him. This is partially willful ignorance on her part. Jude spends a lot of TWK dancing around realizations about Cardan’s character that she’s really uncomfortable with even thinking about. She needs Cardan to be a drunkard who hates her and is not quite human and therefore cannot be understood or relate on human terms. If he’s not then she has to deal with not only her own feelings for him but the fact that they are far more similar then she’d like and that she might not actually need leverage over him. Cardan needs to be Jude’s pawn because she doesn’t know how to deal with a world where he’s not.

This is why she’s so blindsided when he outmaneuvers her at the end of the book. The version of Cardan which Jude has constructed for herself isn’t capable of outmaneuvering her. He isn’t intelligent, sober, crafty and powerful enough to get the better of her. Jude made Cardan a puppet and he became High King when she wasn’t looking.

However, Jude isn’t like Madoc. She isn’t going to be stupid enough to underestimate Cardan twice. She probably still doesn’t understand him, but she knows that he’s just as formidable as she is and that’s better than nothing. It will be interesting to see them face each other on equal ground for the first time in QoN.


	5. Why didn’t Cardan want Balekin dead?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Summary:** Discussion of why Cardan doesn't want Balekin dead.  
>  **Originally Posted:** July 31, 2019

The mistake I think a lot of people make when talking about Cardan and Balekin is in assuming that because Cardan doesn’t want Balekin dead he loves him and thinks he can change. I’m not sure either of those are true. Cardan does not seem to think that Balekin will ever be better than he is and acknowledges that he’s dangerous. Also, I don’t think Cardan really understands how he feels about Balekin. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Cardan loves him, but he also doesn’t hate him. It’s all very confused and Cardan isn’t sure how to deal with it.

Cardan’s refusal to kill is something that he’s extremely vocal about throughout the series, even if it seems counterintuitive to his character. I think that the core of this lies in this quote:

_“When my father sent me away, at first I tried to prove that I was nothing like he thought me. But when that didn’t work, I tried to be exactly what he believed I was instead. If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying. I would live down to his every expectation. If I couldn’t have his favor, then I would have his wrath.”_ (TWK pp. 265-266)

Cardan has made himself a Bad PersonTM because that’s the only way he could get the attention he craves, but no matter what he’s done, he’s always held onto the fact that he’s never killed. That’s his touchstone. No matter how bad he is, he still won’t kill to get people out of his way, unlike basically every other person he knows (the only characters I can say with reasonable certainty would never kill for personal gain are Heather and Oak). As long as Cardan holds onto his refusal to kill he feels that he is better than Balekin and Dain and Eldred and Asha and everyone else who has ever hurt or manipulated him. He has ground to stand on to disdain them.

If you truly look at it, Cardan spends a decent portion of TWK basically begging Jude not to kill Balekin. He’s constantly telling her and spies that, “I know it would be simpler if we were to just kill him, but we can solve this problem in other ways. We do not need to stoop to his level.” Ultimately, Jude ignores him. While killing Balekin is important for Jude’s character arc and taking back her own agency after a month of pretending to be in Balekin’s power, it has the opposite effect on Cardan.

Jude is Cardan’s seneschal which means that her actions are seen as extensions of Cardan’s will. The way Cardan sees it, if he was actually a real king he should have been able to stop Jude from killing Balekin. Because he couldn’t, that means that the blame indirectly falls on him. In his eyes, Jude’s murder of Balekin is the same as if he’d murdered of Balekin himself.

This means that Cardan no longer has any moral high ground. He can’t hate Balekin for the opportunistic murder of their siblings for power because Cardan did the same thing. By killing Balekin, at least from Cardan’s point of view, Jude removes the barrier between himself and his abusers. He is now as bad as they are so he can’t argue that what they did to him was wrong. Of course, in all actuality Cardan’s hands are clean of Balekin’s blood and even if they weren’t, that doesn’t make the things Balekin did to him any less wrong. He is not guilty and there was nothing he could have done, but that doesn’t mean he sees it that way.

While there might be an aspect of protecting Jude in banishing her, I think that one of the main reasons Cardan banishes her beyond revenge for doing the one thing he asked her not to do is that it separates her actions from him. By punishing Jude, Cardan grants the impression that his and Jude’s actions are separate, that she didn’t kill Balekin on his orders. This allows him to at least pretend he doesn’t feel guilty about Balekin’s murder (which he should be able to do as long as no one outright asks him about it) and to continue to pretend that he is a better person than Balekin was (which he is, even if he doesn’t feel like it).


	6. Thoughts and Theories on the QoN Excerpt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Summary:** QoN theories after reading an early sneak peak of the book.  
>  **Originally Posted:** March 26 , 2019
> 
> This post references a particular sneak peak of Queen of Nothing that was released around the time this was written. I'm fairly sure [this is the excerpt in question](https://www.bustle.com/p/the-queen-of-nothing-is-holly-blacks-heart-stopping-finale-to-the-cruel-prince-trilogy-start-reading-now-16984954).

**Ask:**

**[Wants to know my thoughts about the QoN sneak peak which had recently been released.]**

**Me:**

Hi! Here are my thoughts:

1\. Of all the things I reasonably expected, Locke dying was not one of them. My knee jerk reaction is to say killing him feels like a cop-out, but I suppose getting rid of him would serve to streamline the plot by removing people Jude feels she needs to get revenge on (Madoc and, sorry folks, Cardan are the top of that list).

2\. Taryn says that Jude looks like she’s been in a fight. Knowing, Jude that means she’s probably actually been in a fight. I’ll bet Bryern and Grima Mog are both faeries. Grima Mog is probably the cannibalistic one mentioned in the synopsis.

3\. Quick background ramble about Taryn: I recently read some articles for my English major final project talking about how female characters are hated and denounced for things readers would forgive in male characters. As a result the fandom’s hatred for Taryn has started to make me extremely uncomfortable, especially since no one says anything about Madoc, Locke, Balekin and the like. The fandom is so focused on denouncing Taryn that most people have forgotten that she has the same upbringing as Jude. The vast majority of Jude’s trauma, Taryn shares. Ultimately they both want the same thing: to belong in faerie. The difference lies in how they go about trying to belong. Jude’s grand plan is basically to gather as much power as possible, prove that she is as powerful as any faerie and force the faeries to take her seriously and give her the respect she deserves. Taryn, on the other hand, chooses to attempt to fit in. Her hope is that if she just does what was expected of her, the faeries will notice how good she’s being and accept her. The methods are different, but the end result is the same: the faeries notice that the Duarte twins are like them and they are able to participate in faerie as equals.

4\. So, Taryn kills Locke. Admittedly, Taryn was not very high on the list of characters I expected to commit murder. I would have put the odds of Jude killing Cardan as higher than the odds of Taryn killing Locke. That’s not to say that I think Taryn is a saint (literally no one in this series is, save Heather and maybe Oak), but outright killing never seemed like her style. Knowing that, I’d say that whatever it was that ended in her killing Locke had to be pretty serious. Taryn knows that Locke won’t be faithful to her from long before they get married, so it’s unlikely that she would have killed him in a fit of rage at seeing him with someone else (that’s Madoc-style pointless violence right there). Honestly, I can’t see Taryn killing Locke for any kind of emotional reason. Taryn isn’t a killer and she really wants to fit in in Faerie, something that killing her faerie husband will not help her achieve. Honestly, I see Taryn killing Locke because she’d decided after much thought that there was no other option (very Jude-like, you might say, and you’d be right). Not to say that Taryn would be able to take committing murder in stride and go on with her life, she’s probably at least a little broken up about it, but she still did it, and that’s not something I expected from her.

5\. As for why Taryn killed Locke? I don’t have the textual evidence to theorize (could be anything from him plotting treason to a zombie plague, tbh). I suppose Madoc could have ordered her to do it, but I don’t think that’s likely, because if that was the case, why would she go to Jude about it?

6\. I do have a theory about the curse that gets mentioned in the synopsis, but my copy of TWK is currently in my room and I am not. Since I don’t feel capable of sharing that theory without referencing the book, I’ll save it for another time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never did get around to metaing about my theories about the curse, which is disappointing because I can't remember what those theories were now.


End file.
